Gurney and Gurney: Father and son appreciate what it takes to win the Rolex 24 at Daytona

If you're a fan of symmetry, of closed circles, the possibility tantalized: Alex Gurney, 37, gunning to win the 50th-anniversary running of the Rolex 24 at Daytona as his 80-year-old father--Dan, who won the first race, in 1962--applauded from the sidelines.

"The car was delivered pretty late," Alex Gurney said, "but we knew that going in. We've had five test days, which is a good amount, and we've tackled 90 percent of what we think might be reliability issues. We feel pretty good, and the car is quick, but you are always nervous about going into a 24-hour race with a new car. It's better when you have a car that has been through the race a few times, but we like the way the car looks and performs."

Dan Gurney roots for his son's racing endeavors but usually, these days, from his California home, watching on television. He crashed a motorcycle last year and messed up his knee. The racing master had a new one installed on Jan. 19.

"I can't tell how mobile I'll be yet," he said upon his release from the hospital that afternoon. "Every move has to be planned ahead to try not to increase the pain. But I'm not the first one to get a new knee."

Dan Gurney is working on multiple projects of his own, including construction of the revolutionary DeltaWing car scheduled to run at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. "There's a lot of ground to cover," he said, "but it's coming along great."

There is nothing wrong with Gurney's memory regarding the inaugural 1962 Daytona Continental, where he lined up Frank Arciero's little Lotus-Climax 19B against some potent competition, both human and mechanical.

The 50-car lineup was remarkably eclectic, too: Hill raced Luigi Chinetti's Ferrari Dino 246SP, Hall brought his Chaparral 1, and Moss raced Chinetti's Ferrari 250 GT SWB EXP. Also on the list: a Porsche 718 RSK, a dozen Chevrolet Corvettes, a Maserati 200SI, Lotus Elites, Jaguar E-types and--bringing up the rear--Foyt's Pontiac Tempest, which led lap one but managed only one more tour of the circuit, finishing last. Gurney nursed the Lotus along, loving the car but wary of the powertrain.

"That Coventry Climax engine they would farm out to us here in the colonies, we didn't know if it would go the distance. There [were] a lot of used parts in it," he told Autoweek.

In the end, the engine didn't quite make it. Gurney led when, with one minute and 40 seconds remaining in the three-hour race, a connecting rod tried to escape through the side of the block. Gurney coasted to the finish line, stopping just short as Hill and Hall ran him down. The plan was to roll across the finish line just as the three hours expired, but how would Gurney know?

"We had no radios--we pretty much communicated by smoke signals back then," he said. "I knew I had about a two-minute lead, but I didn't know how accurate my watch was, and I was looking up and trying to communicate with the flagman in the flag stand."

A moment later, the flagman waved the checkered flag. Gurney released his brakes and let gravity take him to the win.

"I'd parked up the banking with it facing downhill just a little bit, and I knew if I just jiggled it, the car would roll," he said. Even with the walking-speed finish, Gurney won the then-fastest sports-car race in the United States, at a 104.101 mph average speed.

Dan Gurney and Chuck Parsons in the 1970 race drove a Ferrari 512S but retired before the finish. Photo by LAT PHOTOGRAPHIC

Daytona 24 through the years

"As I look back at the race, just driving into the Daytona speedway was amazing," he said. "This grand project by 'Big' Bill France--I mean, you could never accuse Big Bill of thinking small. None of us knew if a sports-car race would survive there, but even as a three-hour event, we could tell it was history in the making."

As for the Rolex 24 today, Alex Gurney said he also respects how hard it is to win.

"This is probably the most stressful race we run," he said. "It demands the most of the drivers, crew, everyone. You have to be ready for anything, prepare and anticipate the chance of rain, fog, dirt, grass, debris, not to mention the other teams.

"There [are always] a lot of cars on the track . . . a lot of guys who aren't running a full season, so they are sort of unpredictable. The hardest part for me is coming up on a car approaching the chicane, and the driver hits the brakes a lot harder than you are expecting. Like I said, you have to prepare and anticipate."

And Dan Gurney? He expects to be up and around shortly.

"I'll be jitterbugging in no time," he said. And yes, back on his motorcycle.

A Dodge Viper driven by Olivier Beretta, Karl Wendlinger and Dominique Dupuy took the overall win in the 2000 Daytona 24 race. Photo by LAT PHOTOGRAPHIC

1992: A new name debuts, and it sticks: "The Rolex 24 at Daytona." In addition to awarding watches to the winners, Rolex sponsors the entire event. And while the economy is still reeling, largely from the Persian Gulf crisis, the 1992 race has 49 entries, up slightly from 1991. Even so, the outcome is predestined by the strength of five factory-affiliated Nissan entries, and the win goes to the all-Japanese Nissan R91CP driven by Masahiro Hasemi, Kazuyoshi Hoshino and Toshio Suzuki, which wins by nine laps. Second is Tom Walkinshaw's Jaguar, and third is a Hurley Haywood-led Porsche 962. Dan Gurney's Eagle-Toyota Mk III won the pole but finished 11th.

1993: Factory support wanes, leaving Gurney's Toyota-affiliated All American Racers as the only team planning to run the whole season with factory backing. The 60-car field is led to the green flag by a pair of Gurney's Eagles, which set a qualifying record. The Eagle of P. J. Jones, Rocky Moran and Mark Dismore, appropriately all American drivers, wins by 10 laps in a race where all of the other GTP entries have problems; GTS-class cars take second through fourth. Finishing second overall and first in class is a Jack Roush-entered Ford Mustang driven by Wally Dallenbach Jr., Robby Gordon, Robbie Buhl and Tommy Kendall. Another Roush Mustang, led by NASCAR star Mark Martin, finishes third.

1994: It's a strange year, as IMSA has a new owner. Veteran Porsche driver Charles Slater bought the sanctioning body from Mike Cone. Eight new open-cockpit World Sports Car prototypes enter, supposedly pointing the way to the future of the series' top class, including a new Ferrari-Spice 348 owned by Rob Dyson and a Kudzu DG2 built by HANS device co-inventor Jim Downing. None works particularly well, though: Andy Evans's Spice-Chevrolet qualifies on the pole but finishes 46th. The winning car--for the first time since 1983 a GT entry--scores an overall victory in the form of a Nissan 300ZX driv-en by Butch Leitzinger, Scott Pruett, Paul Gentilozzi and Steve Millen. In fact, the top eight cars are GTS or GTU entries, with the top-finishing WSC Harry Brix's Spice-Oldsmobile in ninth.

1995: Slater's willingness to massage IMSA's rules seems to pay off (76 entries), largely because IMSA was going to allow Le Mans prototypes to compete, and Le Mans was going to allow IMSA's WSCs to compete there. One of the resulting entries is a two-car effort from Porsche, including a car for Mario Andretti, but IMSA decides days before the race to restrict the car's air intake. Porsche therefore declines to compete. Receiving the most publicity is a GTS-1 entry, a Jack Roush Ford Mustang. Drivers are Kendall, Martin, Michael Brockman and 70-year-old Paul Newman. A Kremer-Porsche KS WSC wins with drivers Marco Werner, Christophe Bouchut, Jürgen Lässig and Giovanni Lavaggi. But the class win and third overall of Newman's car, a mere eight laps back, enthralls the crowd. "Ain't bad for an elderly gentleman," Newman says.

1996: The WSC class is mature enough to draw a healthy number of entries (16), and it seems likely that one of the better-sorted cars has to be the favorite to win. Qualifying on the pole is Gianpiero Moretti's very fast Ferrari 333SP, which he shares with Bob Wollek, Didier Theys and an unknown-in-the-U.S. driver, Massimiliano Papis, whose first name the American media promptly shorten to Max. The Ferrari battles spectacularly with Dan Doyle's Riley & Scott-Oldsmobile Mk III, driven by Wayne Taylor, Scott Sharp and Jim Pace. In the closing stages, Papis, in second, carves six seconds a lap off the Riley & Scott's lead but ends up about a minute behind, finishing on the lead lap in what was the Rolex 24's closest finish to date.

1997: The race sees another close finish, with Rob Dyson's Riley & Scott-Ford Mk III ending up a lap ahead of the fast qualifier, Evans's Ferrari 333SP. Evans, incidentally IMSA's new owner, is joined by Fermin Velez, Charles Morgan and Rob Morgan. Dyson's car, essentially a backup to a faster team car that expired with a sick engine less than halfway through the race, lists all of Dyson's fellow drivers on the winning car's roster: Elliott Forbes-Robinson, John Schneider, John Paul Jr., Leitzinger, Andy Wallace and James Weaver.

1998: The race is sanctioned now by the United States Road Racing Championship, supervised by the Sports Car Club of America. The WSC class is renamed the Can-Am class, another tip of the helmet to the past. Seventy-four cars start the race, led by Evans's 333SP, which doesn't finish, ending up 20th. Attrition shrinks the field considerably, with 41 DNFs. Surviving at the checkered flag is the 333SP entered and co-driven by Momo founder Moretti, with Arie Luyendyk, Mauro Baldi and Theys, eight laps ahead of Jochen Rohr's Porsche 911 GT1 Evo. GT cars claim second through seventh, with Downing's Kudzu-Mazda the next-highest-finishing Can-Am car, in eighth. Longtime Rolex 24 competitor and supporter Moretti would die on Jan. 14, 2012, after a long illness. His quote the day before his victory in 1998, the year of his retirement from driving, remains a classic: "With all the money I have spent at Daytona, I could have bought 1,000 Rolexes easily."

1999: Dyson's team came painfully close to winning in 1998 before late mechanical problems dropped it from contention, and Dyson returns determined to win. He does, with Leitzinger, Wallace and Forbes-Robinson taking the Riley & Scott-Ford Mk III to a two-lap victory over the 333SP of Alan McNish, Max Angelelli, Taylor and Didier de Radiguès. Ferrari 333SPs also take third and fourth.

2000: This year's race is sanctioned for the first time by the new Grand American Road Racing Association, headquartered in Daytona Beach, Fla., and founded by Jim France, brother of then-NASCAR honcho Bill France Jr. The top class gets another name change and is now called Sports Racer Prototype (SRP). There also is a class for less powerful prototypes, SRP II, and there are three GT categories--GTO, GTU and AGT. The 80-car field is led to the green by Dyson's Riley & Scott-Ford Mk III, but the fast qualifier only manages a fourth-place finish. That is good enough for an SRP-class win, as the podium is dominated by GTO cars. Winning overall is the Dodge Viper GTS-R of Olivier Beretta, Karl Wendlinger and Dominique Dupuy, finishing just 31 seconds ahead of the Pratt & Miller Chevrolet Corvette of Ron Fellows, Justin Bell and Chris Kneifel, which is four laps ahead of the winning Viper's sister car. The next two SRP finishers are Cadillac's flashy Northstar LMP entries, which claim 13th and 14th.

2001: Another embarrassing race for the top-ranked SRP class, with Dyson's Mk III qualifying on the pole but finishing 14th with a DNF. The entire top 10 are GT- or GTS-class cars, with the GTS Corvette of Johnny O'Connell, Fellows, Kneifel and Franck Freon taking an eight-lap victory over the second-place Porsche 996 GT3RS of Lucas Luhr, Randy Pobst, Mike Fitzgerald and Christian Menzel, which also took the GT-class victory.

By far the biggest news, though, is the presence of Dale Earnhardt, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kelly Collins and Andy Pilgrim, who race their Corvette to fourth overall and second in GTS behind their race-winning sister car.

2002: It was a transitional year for the Rolex 24, as the new Grand-Am sanctioning body had plans, but they wouldn't really be visible on the track until 2003. This left a still-healthy starting field of 72 cars, with a smattering of open-cockpit Sports Racing Prototype cars that most expected to be phased out in favor of the new closed-cockpit Daytona Prototypes that would debut the following year. So it was an attitude of "let's leave nothing on the table" for teams such as the Doran Lista Judd Dallara SRP, driven to victory by Max Papis, Freddy Lienhard, Mauro Baldi and Didier Theys, which finished six laps ahead of the Riley & Scott Ford of Jim Matthews, who co-drove with Guy Smith, Scott Sharp and Robby Gordon.

2003: With only six of the new Daytona Prototype cars in the field, none with a lot of test miles, it promised to be an interesting Rolex 24. The beetle-shaped Prototypes did not get good reviews in terms of their appearance, and the fact that they were not particularly powerful played into the hands of the rival American Le Mans Series, which played up power and innovation. But Grand-Am had a plan: Create a class that would not cost that much to compete in, and keep the rules the same long enough for there to be plenty of incentive to build one. In the end, the small starting field saw only 44 cars, compared to 72 in 2002, and only two of the Prototypes survived, finishing fourth and fifth. This left the door open for a GT to take the overall victory, and that is what The Racer's Group did--Kevin Buckler won his class in 2002 but won overall in 2003 in a Porsche 996 GT, which he shared with Timo Bernhard, Michael Schrom and Jorg Bergmeister. Two more GT cars filled out the podium.

2004: As teams owners began buying into the Daytona Prototype concept, the field swelled to 17 for 2004. And the NASCAR connection was beginning to pay off, as drivers such as Dale Earnhardt Jr., Tony Stewart and Jimmie Johnson began their racing season at the Rolex 24, adding some star power. And 53 cars started the event, proving the long-time motorsports maxim that a small field like the race had in 2003 signals opportunity, and new teams answer. In the end, the victory went to the DP of Bell Motorsports, a Doran-Pontiac (Pontiac had pulled out of NASCAR and spent some of that money with Grand-Am) driven by Terry Borcheller, Andy Pilgrim, Christian Fittipaldi and Forest Barber, but only after a heartbreaking performance by Tony Stewart, trying to limp home the leading Crawford-Chevrolet that, late in the race, suffered suspension failure, which the team tried to repair with the only thing they had--blocks of wood. With just 17 minutes left, the suspension finally failed entirely, sending the car into the wall.

2005: Had Rolex 24 fans known in 2004 what they know now, they would have taken one look at Chip Ganassi's Riley-Lexus and thought, "Uh oh." But the team did not do that well in its first outing in 2004 with a 10th-place finish, but they eventually won the championship. That team was back for 2005, now with a three-car entry, and while the Ganassi cars all finished in the top seven, the win went to Wayne Taylor's SunTrust Riley-Pontiac, co-driven with Max Angelelli and Emmanuel Collard. Making news that year was the three drivers who shared a Porsche with veteran Ross Bentley: Brad Coleman, Colin Braun and Adrian Carrio, all 16 years old. They finished 17th overall in one of Kevin Buckler's cars.

2006: It took three years but the Ganassi Target Riley-Lexus took the win, with drivers Casey Mears, Dan Wheldon and Scott Dixon. The fastest car all day was Alex Job's Crawford-Porsche, but mechanical problems dropped it to third overall, three laps behind the winner and one lap behind the second-place Riley-Lexus fielded by the Michael Shank team. Overshadowing it all, though: The appearance of Danica Patrick, less than a year after her Indianapolis 500 debut, who co-drove a Crawford-Pontiac to a 50th-place DNF.

2007: Twenty-eight Daytona Prototypes were in the 69-car field, though by now the question was fast becoming, "Which Ganassi car will win?" In 2007, it was the one driven by Scott Pruett, Juan Pablo Montoya and Salvador Duran, with Ganassi's second car a 41st-place DNF. Second, and on the lead lap, was the Samax Riley-Pontiac driven by Ryan Dalziel, Patrick Carpentier, Darren Manning, and--how could you have forgotten this? Milka Duno.

2008: The 2008 Rolex 24 became what the twice-around-the-clock event had been leading up to for the past decade: An all-out, 24-hour sprint race. Veterans such as Brumos' Hurley Haywood talk about how the race used to be won by planning and strategy--no more. You have to run full out, from start to finish, because if you don't, somebody else will. And, having stuck to the same basic Prototype formula since 2003, the cars and the under-stressed engines could take the pounding. Winning the 2008 "Which Ganassi car?" event: The one driven by Scott Pruett, Juan Montoya, Dario Franchitti and Memo Rojas, two laps ahead of the Gainsco Riley-Pontiac.

2009: Which Ganassi car? Actually, neither of them, as the Brumos Porsche team of David Donohue, Darren Law, Antonio Garcia and Buddy Rice won a popular, emotional victory, the emotional aspect due in part to the recent deaths of Brumos owner Bob Snodgrass and Porsche public relations representative Bob Carlson. The second Brumos Riley-Porsche finished third, and the celebration would have been more pleasant had second-place finisher Juan Montoya, and to a lesser extent, teammate Scott Pruett, not whined about how their Ganassi Lexus was beaten only by the Porsche's unfair advantage, Montoya essentially suggesting that it would be the only way he could lose a closing-laps battle. Four cars finished on the lead lap.

2010: What, no Ganassi winner two years in a row? You could have made some money betting on the outcome of the 2010 Rolex had you figured the brand-new Action Express team, created shortly before the race from the leftovers of the Brumos Prototype stable, with drivers Ryan Dalziel, Mike Rockenfeller, Terry Borcheller and Joao Barbosa. The winning car was a Riley-Porsche but it created a major issue for Porsche: The engine was an independently massaged (but entirely legal) Cayenne V8, not the Porsche-developed engine that had won before, and the question was whether Porsche considered a race engine that Porsche itself did not develop to still be a Porsche. After calls to Germany, they decided it was not, and Porsche didn't claim the victory in the day-after newspapers ads like they did the year before.

2011: We were back to the "Which Ganassi car?" question and the answer essentially was both of them: The Riley-BMW driven by Graham Rahal, Scott Pruett, Memo Rojas and Joey Hand finished just ahead of the Ganassi car driven by Juan Montoya, Scott Dixon, Jamie McMurray and Dario Franchitti. Even so, the Action Express team and the United Autosports team finished third and fourth respectively, both still on the lead lap. Also notable: Grey's Anatomy actor Patrick Dempsey and his Mazda team finished third in the GT class, the best finish for any thespian since Paul Newman.